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Thursday, June 12, 2014

Nothing Says "I Love You" Like... Pimping - In the Year of the Dragon

Carrying on with my craze for custom inserts is another one for an Alea game - In the Year of the Dragon.
The insert for Ityotd is identical to that of Castles of Burgundy, except that the top row of trays have exploded from 6 to 8! (or when divided, from 12 to 16!)

Cover to hold everything in place

I needed more trays for Ityotd because the game comes with multiple characters that players will be recruiting throughout the game. So the 8 trays - that became 15 - were really useful in helping to store each character in their own designated slot.
When asking for the tray to be designed, I didn't really make any measurements to see if the 16 trays would actually fit the character tiles, that was a big risk on my part but I just did my best guesstimate. :P
Well, I'm glad to say that it turned out very fine indeed.

Once the cover is removed... Ta da!

The character tiles fit comfortably both in terms of height and
width/length. And the trays also hold the money, rice/fireworks tiles,
and palace tiles perfectly. My only regret is that I kinda needed maybe one more tray for the disaster tiles, but I managed to fit them into the base tray so that isn't too big of a deal.
On hindsight, Ityotd doesn't really need such a fancy insert. After all, once you set up the game, you kinda remove all the character tiles from the trays (unlike Castles of Burgundy), so the trays aren't going to be used to aid in setup or to help arrange them in neat order. But well, it looks nice, makes me feel good, and I guess it does help to quicken setup (but that would mean it lengthens the keeping of the game).

More Trays! More Flexibility!

Bottom Tray comes with sufficient space for the expansion and action tiles

Having to squeeze 5 player bags into 4 spaces. Thankfully each player bag is relatively small

The bottom tray was a generic design, but it was sufficient to hold all the 5 player pieces & cards, and also had two very convenient mini spaces for the great wall expansion and for the action tiles and disaster tiles.
I'm wondering if I should toss the player bags and just plop them into the boxes. Messier but its not like there's many pieces for each player anyway. Something to consider...

I love the dividable trays !

The same wonderful Craftsmanship

Likewise, Chris did an excellent job in the small but fine touches in his insert design. :)
Well, another one down, and I think I only have 2 more to go
Only 2, but I saved the best ones for last. Heh heh heh.